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Fuzzy Eric writes "Microsoft has confirmed that some handsets running its Windows Phone 7 software are sending and receiving 'phantom data.' The problem surfaced in early January with some owners of phones running Windows Phone 7, claiming that their phone was sending 'between 30 and 50MB of data' every day; an amount that would eat into a 1GB allowance in 20 days. Microsoft said its investigation found that most problems were caused by a unnamed 'third party' service. It said that the problem seemed to only affect 'a small (low single-digit) percentage of Windows Phone customers.'"

Yes the NSA is your telco network, so its free ride for them.
The FBI would just outsource to its wiretap/phone billing software contractors.
Was it like George Koronias of Vodaphone in Greece or Adamo Bove, head of security at Telecom Italia? Or did MS just 'google' and test to see if 3rd party marketing could get away with a nice daily ad database update?
A security hardware/software backdoor, marketing or just MS been MS and alpha testing on your mobile plan?

OR, an even more obvious answer, it could be a third-party service that is only affecting a very low percentage of phone users. Just because it is a MS phone doesn't instantly mean it is time to don the tinfoil hats. MS is into making money, not "destroying people's lives through software" as the groupthink at Slashdot sometimes assumes. (Unless there is serious profit in destroying lives, but so far that isn't the case.)

Unless there is serious profit in destroying lives, but so far that isn't the case

That depends. There is profit to be had from hyping up a piece of shit software, let's call it Windies MEVisto, have everyone buy it and complain that it's destroying their lives. Because then you can bringing out a new and similar version later called Windies XP7SE "Doesn't Destroy Your Life So Much" Edition to get people to pay yet again.

We found the problem. It wasn't our fault, and it doesn't matter because it's not happening to anyone. (lie)

Until Microsoft say which service causes this (so it can be independently verified by users) then you just have to assume that it is a lie. Normally I like to give the benefit of the doubt (and it does seem feasible that a 3rd party app is responsible, but like you said, this follows the standard style of PR spin that most companies employ.

This would not be a problem if the mobile OS actually valued the customer over the developers and phone companies. My last Symbian phone prompted the user to give permission to any app that wanted to access the Internet. No spyware under the guise of a game here, no 3rd party services chewing up quota, no apps being just thin layers over websites.

I hate seeing that circle animation that says data access is happening on my iPhone for something that shouldn't need it. Even worse, I hate the fact that on the iPhone the developer can turn off that display so you don't know if any connection has occured. Evil. I presume that the Windows Phone does the same thing.

Probably because, while they're far from perfect, more of Apple's mistakes have been both relatively harmless and also overblown by the media ( they mysterious "death grip" is a good example). Alternatively, many of Microsoft's mistakes have been glossed over my the media and have actually been quite annoying.

In this case, there seems to be no good reason why Microsoft couldn't have revealed exactly what was going on. If its a telco app, then just say "We can't reveal any more details due to our non-discl

Actually that number comes with a big caveat since it started circulating a few weeks earlier, that even that mashable article, or the MS link it references, are carefully avoiding to shed light on. Those reported are 1.5 million handset sold "to carriers", or "by manufacturers" (which mostly sell to carriers, gosh).

For all we know, 90% of those 1.5 million might be still be unsold, sitting on shelves and warehouses and NOT in the hands of a customer. And that kind of carefully treading around the ambiguity is a giant, glowing, blinking warning sign..

This is how typically MS depicts success when it isn't. 1.5 million Windows phones have been sold to retailers and carriers, not to consumers. Considering that Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP , LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm all made phones and they were launched on the networks: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Telus, Bell Canada and SingTel, 1.5 million is abysmal. That's on average 100,000 per carrier and 160,000 per manufacturer. Remember that number also represents units that were given to MS employees. If I understand the process, MS employees could buy a phone and the company would reimburse them.

In this history of MS, they launched the Zune the same way. They showed great sales figures for the 2006 holiday season but what they didn't make clear was those were units shipped to retailers not sold to consumers. They also didn't disclose that for several months after that they shipped virtually no Zunes because the retailers were fully stocked. In the end, retailers had to get rid of the Zunes mostly at huge discounts.

If my memory serves, iPhone owners were going through this same issue of having lots of data being sent in the middle of the night. AT&T's response was that it was just the system relaying the days usage all at once but many didn't buy that.

Can it still be considered 3rd party if the company that generated the "phantom data" was contracted by either the carrier or Microsoft to develop the app to intentionally run up the quota, hopefully going unnoticed and generating overage charges? My ex-bank, 5th3rd [prnewswire.com] has a class-action lawsuit against them for doing something similar.

Well, yes. My Windows 7 work phone, for example, runs on the UK Orange network. It came in an Orange-branded box, it has Orange-branding within the phone software, and Orange apps bundled with it that can't be removed. Annoying, yes, but standard practice in the phone world. It also has HTC-specific apps built into it such as the HTC hub.
If it turns out that a network is bundling crapware with the handset that uses too much data in some conditions, or a vendor such as HTC has a bug in their app, then I wouldn't blame MS for it.
It's a big "if", but it's a definite possibility and until we know the reason I suggest we stop getting so hysterical about it.

"We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes," a spokesperson said.
The firm also said that it was looking into "potential workarounds" until the issue was solved.

fwiw, there's evidence that one potential culprit was a yahoo mail client

How is it better? His holiness points out you're holding it wrong, you stop holding it wrong, problem solved! Microsoft tells you it's a third-party app, what do you do? Stop using third-party apps? Oh wait...

So Microsoft won't tell their users who have problems WHICH software is offending here? Seriously? I'm sure their affected WP7 users just love being denied that information while paying AT&T the bills for their nightly "activities" due to a "third party service". At least they'd be able to turn it off while waiting for a fix if they knew which software caused the problems.

Who does Microsoft care more about? Users or Developers and Partners? Their actions speak louder than words. They are reluctant to tell people the truth so that they can protect themselves or conserve their resources in favor of protecting developers and partners. In the world of Microsoft (and indeed Apple and most other commercial software vendors) the users are to be taken for granted and abuse of users, their information, their computers and their resources are all the norm.

I realize this is more preaching to the choir for most people here and/or this is "stating the obvious" but I think it's sometimes useful to remind people and users of where the priorities and motivations of the vendors they use and rely on are. By knowing their priorities and motivations, you can keep yourself appropriately aware and even guarded. For example, we have a LOT og Google fans here. In the eyes of some, Google does no evil and can do no wrong. They are an advertiser and a marketer and maintain all of the priorities and motivations of advertisers and marketers. It is important to keep Google in perspective. Google is just one example. Microsoft's main strategy is to keep their markets saturated with Microsoft products and services. This is accomplished through strategic partnerships and arrangements with OEMs and resellers among others. This means they place their priorities in favor of those channels; partners, OEMs, developers and all. If Microsoft's primary channel was retail and online sales, their priority would then be focused on the people who buy their products and services directly. But this is, for the most part, not the case.

For this reason ("Who does Microsoft care about?") I generally avoid Microsoft. It is not because they are buggy or insecure or "evil." It is the fact that as a user or customer, they are not interested in my needs or interests. That's a simple fact.

That is a good question and I think the answer is in maintaining their position. They do only what is necessary and skip anything deemed unnecessary. This explains their reluctance to acknowledge and to fix even the most critical of security flaws. So why fix it at all? Because without it, all users would stop using it.

So there is a state of basic functionality that must be maintained, but that should not be confused with "caring about the user's interests" beyond their ability to continue using the pro

They have no reason to care about users, since few users are actually customers. That copy of Windows on your Dell doesn't make you a Microsoft customer, it makes Dell their customer unless you bought Windows in a box and installed it yourself. Few enough people do that to make them completely unimportant to MS.

If they refuse to tell anyone what this "Unnamed 3rd party service" is... then I think it's well within our rights to assume the worst. The FBI/CIA really aren't all that creative.My suggestion? British Petroleum. They are tracking out movements to determine the best place to have the next oil slick. If no ones around, no one will notice.

any other suggestions? Once we decide on a winner we can go update Wikipedia with our "Facts" and start spreading it around the internet via forums and blog posts. Remember

I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't really know a single person who has this phone, but phantom 3rd party data seems like is would be software installed by the carrier. MS just doesn't want to throw whoever the carrier is under the bus. When I got my Droid phone, there was a bunch of bloatware installed by Verizon. That's just my guess... it could be the NSA or the FBI or NASA for all I know.

I have a friend who is on the lowest level plan that AT&T offers for the iPhone, and was able to afford one when the plans switched from unlimited only to a tiered system. She really doesn't need unlimited data, since the bulk of her data use is done via wifi with 3G/Edge for those handy times when she needs it. I say "can now afford" not in that "children going hungry" sense, but that her budget was reasonable for a new phone, but with her usage patterns the cost of an unlimited/huge plan would have be

That's very true, but the way the tiers work is really designed to screw the customer anyway. If they didn't want to do that, they'd bill you based on which tier your usage patterns fit into, rather than you adjusting your usage patterns to fit a specific tier.

I'm happily on AT&T's unlimited plan, and it works well for me: I've got some months where I pull 1 gig, and one where I've pulled as high as 6. Granted, it's mostly from video.

Well, in my country, 1Gb is almost the biggest dataplan any phone company offers, and it costs me 45$ per month .
I could have an "unlimited" data plan for 150$ per month, but this price is simply outrageous.
And no, I don't live in the tird world, in central Europe actually.
Switzerland, where not everyone is a rich banker that promote tax evasion...

Actually, in my experience cell phones are much cheaper in the 3rd world. For 30 bucks in most of Africa you can get a cell phone and more minutes than you could ever use. I'm not sure about smart-phones over there, but the basic cell phone service is astoundingly cheap.

We're just used to that old and lame excuse that 'Everything is more expensive in Switzerland *shrug*'... But frankly, that 1 GB limit is plain stupid. Especially when you consider that these plans aren't even primarily targeted at mobile devices like phones but mobile devices like laptops and netbooks and there, one GB is just a lame joke.

In Great Britain, T-Mobile has only a 500MB data plan for new customers (originally *all* customers, but the backlash was too great). They have an ad campaign now saying "don't view video or download files, save that for your computer at home".

Yes you are, as there are far more economically viable data contracts utilising 3G data dongles. If you have your laptop with you anyway, why are you using a phone for data? Don't give me "It's one less thing to carry"; If you are using a device which requires tethering for data, it almost certainly has a USB port.

Yes you are, as there are far more economically viable data contracts utilising 3G data dongles. If you have your laptop with you anyway, why are you using a phone for data? Don't give me "It's one less thing to carry"; If you are using a device which requires tethering for data, it almost certainly has a USB port.

Because I have a phone that does tethering with unlimited data already, and over the last month I drove all around Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, and out in those big western states there is a lot of land where the only available internet is 3G(which, surprisingly, is almost everywhere out there).

The performance is fine for what I'm doing, I already have the contract, I already have the phone, its easy, and what more reason do you need?

Smart phone owner here. No data plan, voice only. I have wifi at home and work. The GPS maps for the USA, Canada and Mexico are stored on the phone. Who on earth thinks everyone makes the sames decisions and has the same priorities? Who on earth thinks that some people might not want to follow the herd and strike out on their own instead?

And when I did have the data plan, my usage was approximately 150 MBs a month down and 60 MBs a month up.

I have an iPhone on AT&T. Currently I subscribe to the 2GB plan but the reality is that I use just over 200kb a month (just enough I can't get the cheapest plan).

I use the phone all the time for data, so how can I use so little? It's because most of the time I'm at home or work, both places with WiFi. In-between the largest data use is either browsing or network map loading from Waze, a free driving/gps applciation I leave on whenever I drive.

A and B may be true, but C is quite the opposite. You can be 99,999% sure your mobile Internet traffic also gets routed goes trough one of the NarusInsight boxes [narus.com]. These things are produced for mass-surveillance with a reported capacity of 10Gbit of traffic per unit... Since mobile networks can potentially be a goldmine for 'anti-terrorist' monitoring you can be sure they hooked a fiber from each large network node to a room filled with these babies. The problem is that the chance of C is much higher than mo

I think he meant "bugging" in the sense of "annoying," not "wiretapping." His point, I think was that he doesn't really care if the FBI is wiretapping him because they almost certainly will never bother him or waste his time, but advertisers almost certainly will.

Ahh, I didn't think that wording out. Thank you.

I should add though that I do indeed care, I'm just not panicking about it. If the FBI follows me for a month it will be a unnecessary invasion of my privacy and I will be upset, but I won't be outright panicking is because at the end of that month the FBI will be bored out of their minds and move on to someone worth following.

A. They already track youB. They don't need shit on youC. Because of A. and B. you are right.

And companies will bugger you no matter what. I have yet hear some marketing person say: Let's not contact these people as they are not in our target group. Instead they say: How can we rephrase it so it looks as if we targeting him personally.

Look, I own a Windows phone (not 7 it's 6.1 then flashed it to 6.5) . I hate Windows for many reasons. I think it's slow (granted, the hardware is not top of the line), it's cumbersome, and there are next to no apps for it.

But the claim that a windows phone has to be rebooted every other day or that one gets BSODs on a windows phone -- that's pure crap. The phone is not rock solid, but it easily runs for months on end with no problem. The few times i've actually had to reboot my windows phone was either because i was flashing an updated ROM or because I was trying to see if the signal issues were caused by the OS (they weren't).

So given that winmo 6.5 is decently stable, why would you FUD about phone 7?

For me the biggest issues with windows mobile 6.5 are: slow startup, slow GUI, poor app market. Each of these is a huge minus for winmo compared to the competition. But I would not complain about the phone's stability.

I will put money on it not being anything like that interesting.
It'll probably turn out to be either a crucial app vendor or a launch partner that they don't want to annoy - e.g. if it turned out that one of the HTC apps or the Facebook app was doing it. Until they know for sure, and work out how to fix it they probably want to be a little coy about what's causing it.
Anyway, it's not affecting that many users as far as I can tell. I've got an HTC Mozart for work that's not doing it, after checking my data usage.

My bet is the "Windows Live" service. Why? The one complaint I saw with anything significant to say was a person complaining that they had everything turned off *except* for their Facebook sync through 'Windows live'. My bet, chances are that the Sync is pulling over all the images and bitmaps along with the web updates, and not pulling over just the delta changes to them. Perhaps its a re-download service, not a true sync.

If At&T is the primary service then Windows Live is a third party to that service. Since Microsoft did not name themselves as the culprit, they are in fact an Unnamed service. And of course why would Microsoft want to piss off their own their own management, or worse, to let potential buyers know what the real problem is?

Like a good/. reader I did not actually read TFA, but unless they are also disabling this unnamed app and thus keeping it from screwing over more customers, then I don't consider MS' behavior to be decent.
And I'll stop there.

It's a 3G problem. From the descriptions it appeared to be certain phones on certain carriers. My best guess is that some service was mis-configured to continuously send data instead of bursting it or not to send it all. The size of the data seems to suggest that logging was inadvertently turned on and sending.

I don't know how it's done at Microsoft, but I am familiar with a few "Fortune 500"'s and their SOP, and you'd be surprised to know how few of them actually believe in consumer testing. Failing to do this is no one's fault but the manufacturer's despite your apologist stance.

If you put your name on a product and make money from a product, you are responsible for that product and all the good and bad that goes with it - especially if the problem comes about through regular everyday use and not extreme or abu